Fire!

[Burnham]

My mountain is burning .

Dollar Lake Fire, on the northeast flank of Mt. Hood, is burning in high elevation mixed oldgrowth forest. About 1500 acres today, mostly in federally designated wilderness, a couple of helos doing water drops, 15 or so hand crews. Wrapped a historic log building that the Crag Rats use to stage SAR work out of in foil and foamed it down.

Here's a couple of pics from the opposite side of the mountain.



And a couple of Mt. Jefferson off to the south. As you can see, we had marine layer in the lowlands. Several fires down that way too.

 

[PCTREE]

man that sux

 

[NeTree]

Word.

 

[gf beranek]

Bound to be more in store. The fire season is early yet.

 

[wiley_p]

No column yet, looks like a high elevation creeper. It'll be fine B. Good to clean out the understory and get a mosaic going.

 

[flushcut]

And new life shall spring forth from the ashes. It is sad to see it burn but we humans are so small and quick lived on this rock that I think momma nature pays us no mind. I hope safe return to all fire crews and a massive snow or rain fall to save the trees minus the land slides.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Ahhh crap.... ! Sorry you get to deal with that Burnam. Kills me to see the woods burn.

 

[Paul B]

in the planetary short term, that sucks, in the grand scheme of mother nature, its natural to burn once in again to clean things up. Hope its not too severe for your mountain area Burnham.

 

[Jed]

Sorry Burnham.

Maybe they'll need some qualified fallers (namely yourself) to clean some stuff up.

 

[stehansen]

What Wiley said.

 

[Bermy]

Oh dear! I hope it doesn't get too bad.
Fire is a thing I'm having to adjust to down in Tasmania, our ecological impactor in Bermuda is wind, over there it's fire, whole new ball game!

 

[Tree Reb]

We get some bad fires here that's for sure but it's amazing to see how things flourish afterwards. The National Park just south of Sydney was just about wiped out a few years ago, you wouldn't believe it now.

This was in the news tonight. Shrub thrives after Black Saturday




Sorry about your mountain Burnham.

 

[gf beranek]

Oh yeah, you guys had some terrible fires over there not long ago.

 

[Burnham]

It'll be back eventually. But it takes a long time (relative to human time frames only) at just under timberline elevations for the forest to re-establish.

It's a normal part of how the ecosystem functions...I'm just being selfish .

 

[gf beranek]

The fires we had on the coast in 08 burned far more understory than overstory. Which cleaned up most of the fuel and shrub species. And made it kind of nice and easy to walk through the woods today.

 

[wiley_p]

When you see this, then it is a bummer.

 

[gf beranek]

That will out right sterilize the environment. I almost believe that much bellowing and churning of particulates in the atmosphere could create its very own lightening. I saved that pic. Wild.

 

[Burnham]

Indeed, seen too many.

 

[wiley_p]

That will out right sterilize the environment. I almost believe that much bellowing and churning of particulates in the atmosphere could create its very own lightening. I saved that pic. Wild.

That column is just about ready to cap out, and throw it's own strikes. One of the things I do miss is lighting backfires that would do that and see that my work was creating a thunderstorm.

 

[gf beranek]

There you go trying to change the weather again, Dave. So it will create its own lightening. I recall when they quit burning the clear cuts here in the early 80's. Now that was some big smoke real fast and didn't last very long.

 

[Cobleskill]

My bud lived in the Florida panhandle. They had a wildfire in his area. He helped a friend fight the fire and said it seemed like it was creating its own weather. Scary stuff.

 

[stig]

Be it natural or not, I just hate the thought of oldgrowth burning.
Ain't too much of it left, to my way of thinking.

 

[Bodean]

Just my little opinion, but Smokey the bear loaded the hell out of our forests with fuels.
We did a lot of Project work, but every fire that was stopped as opposed to milking it and herding it for purpose, jacked us up.

 

[Al Smith]

A wild fire is just something we don't see in these parts .Yes on occasion you get a wheat field fire that might set a woods afire but all it does is burn out the underbrush if any .No real damage .

Usually you couldn't set these woods on fire if you tried .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Just my little opinion, but Smokey the bear loaded the hell out of our forests with fuels.
We did a lot of Project work, but every fire that was stopped as opposed to milking it and herding it for purpose, jacked us up.

And you are absolutely correct Deva. Good name pick for meddling man too.. Smokey...

The other thing most folks forget is that the native Americans used to light fire behind them as they relocated camp during different seasons. This kept the under story down and helped with their hunting when they returned.
Prior to some regulation being passed to squelch fires in this century, there were still families here doing controlled burning of thousands of acres. A tradition that was learned probably from the native Americans. Keep the land clear and fire won't take the land. They were stopped by regulation that was probably made with good intention. Fires can get away from us time to time. One look up in Yosemite from a couple years ago will show you that. It is near impossible to get through all the red tape these days for the private sector to do prescribed burning even with forestry supervision. Some of us are trying here in my county to do so.
Our newer generations are now finally learning that fire is necessary to germinate certain species of trees and plants. Fire re-establishes certain native grasses by eliminating invasive competition. It is a factor of nature that things have adapted to over millions and possibly billions of years that as you stated, should be "milked" for it's merit and worth and not squelched to promote future wild fires.